[Editors] MIT Research Digest - April 2004

[MIT News Office]

MIT RESEARCH DIGEST - April 2004

A monthly tip-sheet for journalists of recent research
advances at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Web version: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/rd
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For more information on Research Digest items, contact:
Elizabeth Thomson, MIT News Office
Phone: (617) 258-5402 * mailto:thomson at mit.edu

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IN THIS ISSUE: Dances with Robots * Beautiful Mind
Weird Fields * Memories and the Mind
Breast Cancer Model * Brain Circuitry and Computers
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DANCES WITH ROBOTS
The bubbly clarinet solo that opens a 1940s swing classic begins, 
setting a pair of dancers in motion. They move in constant rhythm, 
varying their steps to the song's changing tempo. Slight pushes and 
pulls of the dancers' hands allow seamless transitions between tuck 
turns and Texas Tommies. You might call this swing dancing. Or you 
might call it a highly evolved system of communication and control 
via haptic (touch-based) signaling. MIT graduate student Sommer 
Gentry, an expert swing dancer, sees it both ways. Gentry is 
investigating the complex haptic communication behind the 
often-improvised moves in swing dancing.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2004/dancerobot.html

BEAUTIFUL MIND
MIT Institute Professor Isadore M. Singer shares the 2004 Abel Prize 
for the discovery and proof of a theorem that is one of the great 
landmarks of 20th-century mathematics. The Abel, which has been 
likened to the Nobel Prize, but for mathematics, was announced by the 
Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters March 25. Singer and Sir 
Michael Francis Atiyah of the University of Edinburgh will receive 
the prize from King Harald of Norway on May 25. They will share 
$875,000 "for their discovery and proof of the index theorem, 
bringing together topology, geometry and analysis, and their 
outstanding role in building new bridges between mathematics and 
theoretical physics," according to the academy.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2004/singer.html

WEIRD FIELDS
The winning images in MIT's first annual "Weird Fields" contest are 
not only beautiful but also educational, helping their creators 
understand the abstract phenomena they're learning about in the 
physics course from which the contest originated. It's easy to 
directly experience and therefore get a rough understanding of 
gravity -- we've all dropped things -- but what about electromagnetic 
forces? The vectors, or flow fields, that physicists use to describe 
these forces are very abstract. In response, Professor of Physics 
John Belcher and colleagues at the MIT Center for Educational 
Computer Initiatives developed a computer applet into which students 
put the mathematical expressions that describe a given field, 
resulting in an exploration and understanding of vectors as well as 
some beautiful, weird images.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2004/weirdfields.html

MEMORIES AND THE MIND
Memories do indeed light up the corners of our mind, just as the 
songwriter said. Scientific evidence for this notion comes from 
studies using magnetic resonance imaging to examine the living human 
brain. These studies show that certain brain areas "light up" as an 
individual is learning information. Scientists had previously 
established that people remember emotionally charged events and facts 
better than neutral ones. Now researchers at MIT have discovered that 
memories with an element of arousal or excitement are remembered by a 
different area of the brain -- the amygdala -- from memories of a 
calmer nature, which are remembered by the prefrontal cortex. MIT 
Scientists hope the work will one day lead to a treatment for memory 
loss and learning impairments.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/2004/mar03/memories.html

BREAST CANCER MODEL
The last few years have witnessed critical advances in breast cancer 
therapies. Still, the disease afflicts one in eight American women, 
and scientists have yet to develop a living model with which they can 
study the intricacies of human breast-tumor behavior. Now, a team led 
by Biology Professor Robert Weinberg at MIT and the Whitehead 
Institute for Biomedical Research has successfully grafted human 
breast tissue into the mammary glands of mice. As a result, the mice 
formed functional breasts that are capable of producing human breast 
milk. More importantly, some of these mice were engineered to form 
early stage breast tumors like those found in humans.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2004/cancer.html

BRAIN CIRCUITRY AND COMPUTERS
MIT Professor Guosong Liu reports new information on neuron design 
and function that he says could lead to new directions in how 
computers are made. While computers get faster all the time, they 
continue to lack any form of human intelligence. Computers lag in raw 
processing power -- even the most powerful components are dwarfed by 
100 billion brain cells -- but their biggest deficit may be that they 
are designed without knowledge of how the brain itself computes. 
While computers process information using a binary system of zeros 
and ones, the neuron, Liu discovered, communicates its electrical 
signals in trinary -- utilizing not only zeros and ones, but also 
minus ones. This allows additional interactions to occur during 
processing.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2004/liu.html

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